Re: Alternate database locations

Tauren Mills writes:

> I've sent this to both pgsql-general and pgsql-admin. Please advise which
> is the proper list for this type of question.

-admin probably

> There also appears to be a way to create databases with an absolute path,
> but this is turned off by default for security reasons. I haven't tried
> this yet, but it looks like I'd have to recompile with different settings
> for ALLOW_ABSOLUTE_DBPATHS.

> However, this page indicates that there are security risks in doing this.
> What are those risks? If I prevent users other than the superuser
> "postgres" from being able to create and drop databases, are there any
> security risks?

No. The risks are related to the fact that non-superusers can also be
allowed to create databases.

> Lastly, I've even tried creating a database normally, then moving it to the
> user's area and creating a symlink to it. But this didn't seem to work.

It should, since that is what the "official" mechanisms do as well.

> * Is there an easy way to map database directories in the file system to
> database names? The directories names in /var/lib/pgsql/data/base/ are not
> very helpful.

In 7.1 and later, there is one database per directory and the directories
are named $PGDATA/base/<oid>, where <oid> is the oid of the pg_database
entry.

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net http://funkturm.homeip.net/~peter